Our Story has 3 Chapters. Client Affinity.A Dedicated Team.Our Point of View.

We are SoHo Experiential. We ignite social relevance through thoughtfully crafted brand experiences.

Us

Client Affinity

We’re in love with our clients. They inspire us to be more than an event marketing agency. It’s a relationship built on years of trust, collaboration and a collective belief in genuine value. Our clients know we understand that loyalty is only the starting point of the conversation. We build brand affinity.

Our POV

We welcomed six new interns to the team this past week! They bring a diverse set experiences and interests to the table, so start getting to know this group of go-getters!

A’yonna – Born and raised in Harlem, A’yonna is a New York local who hopes to pave her way to a career NYC’s bustling marketing industry. She’s a graduate of Lehman College with a background in Business and Marketing. Her creative outlets are her de-stressors. In her down time you can find her freewriting poetry, short stories and formal essays. Ask her about theater because she’s also an actress and director. This summer she’ll be under the supervision of Shauna, Haleh and Jeanne.

Julia – Julia is currently a senior at the University of Pittsburgh and majoring in Communications with a minor in Studio Arts. For the past 4 months she’s been studying abroad in London while traveling around the rest of Europe. She’s glad to be back in her home state of New Jersey and even more excited to be interning here on the Production team. Outside of work you can find her painting and skiing, so if you’re into that (including travel) she’s the right person to chat it up with.

Katie – Katie graduated from Brown University with a major in Computer Science. She’ll be helping Anthony with all tech and creative endeavors. Originally from the DC area, and after spending the last few years in Rhode Island, she’s ready to take on the mean streets of NYC. She seems pretty adamant about getting to know the city well so if you have any suggestions on upcoming events or areas of the city to check out, we’re sure she’ll greatly appreciate it.

Jared – This soon to be junior at the University of Maryland is super eager to soak up as much marketing information as he can here. How eager you ask? So eager that he wanted to assist those at the top of food chain at SoHo. Catch him tailing around Rick and Jeff, as he’ll be under their guidance. Aside from his interest in marketing, he’s a NBA fanatic, an Apple fanboy and very into collecting sneakers. Best of all, he’s from the great state of New Jersey.

Sloan – This ball of energy is here to aid Asa with everything Citi. Coming from both sides of Pennsylvania, Philly being her home city and attending Carnegie Mellon (same as Aubrey) in Pittsburgh, she’s here in NYC to get to know SoHo. I know she’s really into glitter and corgis, which seems like an appropriate combination, and she’s had experience planning events during her college years. Neat stuff. Warning: She doesn’t like berries…at all.

Caroline – Caroline is soon to be a junior at SUNY Cortland (same school as Lauren) with a concentration in PR and Advertisement. She’s currently running the marketing team for her sorority at school, so she’s ready to learn the in’s and out of the industry from team Shaq. Like Ayonna, she is native to NYC, but in recent years has moved to Long Island where she’s a hostess at a very popular Italian restaurant.

This May, SoHo Experiential kicked off its relationship with Lancôme, launching our pop up experience at The Ulta Beauty General Managers Conference.

The Pop Up promoted the launch of Monsieur Big, a 24-hour, eyelash-volume boosting mascara. The event incorporated both digital and analog elements, integrating social sharing, and shoppable interactions.

We placed an emphasis on personalizing the experience for each attendee with the following elements:

A makeover area featuring Lancôme products where consumers could try a bevy of the latest Lancôme products they could then share via the Smart Mirror!

A selfie wall of flowers so natural looking, everyone just had to touch to see if they were real (ahem, yes).

The elements were all designed to let consumers interact with the brand in an up close and personal fashion. We also included interactive, prize-oriented activities. These included the ever-popular Spin Wheel, as well as a ring toss, giving guests the chance to win of a selection of Lancôme products, because as everyone knows, people love a giveaway.

The experience was consistently packed, (sometimes nearly to the point of crowding) and by the end of the conference, we’d seen a great many attendees remark on how impressed they were with the effects of the Monsieur Big product.

Ulta by the Numbers:

The event took place over 3 days in Orlando, Florida.

10,000 attendees from all over the country.

The Lancôme Booth was one of the highest attended, engaging more than 1,000 attendees.

100+ interacted with our new facial recognition technology helping us to refine the concept for the full rollout this summer

The GMC conference served as the launch pad for a brand new touring pop up store, jointly created by SoHo and Lancôme designed to engage millennial consumers across the nation this summer. This new above-the-line campaign created by Lancôme will introduce the bold, playful, cool and fun side of the brand. To extend the message experientially, SoHo created a tour that will integrate the language and the habits of millennial consumers.

We believe strongly in the power of in-person interaction, but that it isn’t the whole story. The modern consumer lives a significant part of his or her life on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat (authors included). Features like Facebook Live, as well as Instagram & Snapchat Stories, are bridging the digital divide between consumers and brands. When paired with an engaging event, these tools can help you to meet more consumer needs, and impact more people, than either one can on its own. Check out our tricks of the trade for using social media and experiential marketing, together! Let’s get into it.

Broaden your reach

In terms of overall reach and targeting, you can’t do better than a well-constructed social media campaign for filling your event’s guest list. That’s not to say that mailing lists don’t have their merit, and certain types of events do require personalized invitations, but the advantages of social advertising, especially when using Facebook and Instagram, are plain to see. From the start, you can easily identify the types of attendees you are looking for, and target them specifically. From there, you can track your ad’s performance, while staying nimble to make modifications as the list fills up.

Encourage guests to invite their friends

Social targeting is great, but there’s no substitute for an invitation from a friend. Social posts are easily shareable by design, and you can feel confident that once sent, it will at the very least be acknowledged, rather than joining a list of thousands of unread emails. Not only will friend-to-friend invitations boost your potential attendance, they will help solidify your guests’ commitment to the event, with 12% of millennials admitting that they will only RSVP once they know if their friends are attending (via SocialChorus).

Hype, hype, hype!

From the second that you establish your social presence, you can begin to build excitement for your event, to speak directly to your guests, and to show off all the cool things they’ll get to do. Perhaps just as important as building excitement, a consistent social presence will keep you on your guests’ minds. The more you content you push out, the less likely they will be to forget about their commitment to attend.

Give your event some context

Event professionals know better than anyone, there’s a big difference between an event and an experience. An event is just a thing you go to. An experience, on the other hand, is looked forward to, is savored, is remembered fondly and recounted often. By couching your event in a larger campaign, not only will you give your guests a better idea of what they’re looking forward to, you can build a strategy that can lead to offshoot events, merchandise, and more.

Put all your #content under one roof

Shareability is the name of the game. You know that, we know that, everyone knows that. It’s not groundbreaking to suggest creating an event hashtag, nor to design shareable visual elements for your activation. BUT, your work does not end at the construction of your super-duper cool photo wall! Keep an eye out for posts using that specially crafted hashtag, pull out the best content, compile it, and reach out to your most enthusiastic guests. An event Instagram can be a great hub for that type of content.

Tell a “Story”

Three years ago, who knew that the word “ephemeral” would have risen to the prominence that it finds itself in today? Disappearing content is all the rage, and your event should be taking full advantage. Whether you go with Snapchat or Instagram (or even Facebook? OK, probably not Facebook), the time is now for quick hitting photos and videos that bring consumers into the fold. And for the day-of, don’t forget to design a geofilter, an inexpensive way to let your guests show off a little to their friends. It’s fun, simple, and has plenty of potential to help build buzz for your next event.

Create a community

When you’re on social media, you socialize. It’s what you do. One of our favorite things that we see at nearly all of our events is strangers coming together in some sort of shared experience. Don’t let that moment pass when the event ends! Social pages are a great way to keep the conversation going, and again, the more robust your community, the easier time of it you’ll have filling your guest list the next time around.

Livestream it!

What if we told you there was a way to broaden your event’s reach from a small group in a room or even a convention center, to tens of thousands? Would that be something you might be interested in? We’re talking, of course, about livestreaming. You knew that when you read the section title. As valuable as we think a small group event often can be, we don’t want to exclude people who couldn’t attend our events in person for whatever reason. Livestreaming, (we use Facebook Live) brings everyone in on the action. Just be mindful of your setup: make sure the sound quality is reasonable and you’re capturing something engaging. No one wants to watch glorified security camera footage, whether it’s live or not.

Pull back the curtain

Everyone likes a little bit of inside access. Whether through those Stories that we discussed earlier, on your standard Instagram or Facebook feeds, or even both(!), it costs you nothing to show what went into the event that your guests will be experiencing, or just experienced. You put in the hard work, don’t be afraid to show off!

Let the influencers influence

Hiring influencers to attend your event? Get your money’s worth! Stage a social takeover, and make sure that their impact is felt beyond the lucky group that gets to see them in person. They should also pop in on your live feed. You hire an influencer because their presence means something to people; the more people who see it, the greater the return on investment you will see.

At SoHo, we work to put on events that make a lasting impact. To that end, we think that social media and experiential marketing can be two sides to the same coin, drawing on each other’s strengths in content creation, online and in-person dialogue, and engagement that begins before an event starts and extends long past its conclusion. A well-thought out campaign should employ a strategy that uses both marketing techniques, and develops as the social media features arms race escalates!

On an unseasonably warm winter night, my colleague and I headed to Whisky Live, held at Pier 60 of Chelsea Piers, NYC. Never before having been to a spirits trade show, I was not sure what to expect. Upon entering though, both myself, a spirits marketing newbie, and my colleague Haleh, a seasoned spirits professional, were welcomed with the mayhem one could expect at an event such as this.

With males aged 30 – 60 making up about 90% of attendees, females in this crowd were few and far between. After receiving our credentials and checking in, we hurried through the dining room, which was surprisingly full of dinner entrée stations. Although we knew we needed some fuel prior to imbibing, the lack of finger foods made it almost impossible for us to do so.

Upon entering, Haleh did a beeline for a virtual reality set-up at the Ardbeg booth.

The presentation took the viewer on a journey through Islay, a unique and rustic setting where the peaty scotch is produced. Islay is home to several other whisky brands including SoHo clients, Bruichladdich and The Botanist.

While the virtual reality presentation was interesting but not necessarily thrilling, we later grew an affection for the Ardbeg team after crashing (blame it on poor directional signage!) a private sampling hosted by Ardbeg Distillery Manager, Mickey Heads.

Although we were supposed to attend The Glenlivet “Nothing Added, Nothing Taken Away: Cask Strength Whiskies” tasting, we stumbled upon Mickey and his colleague, Ambassador David Blackmore who went above and beyond to make us feel welcome.

Thanks to the extremely tiny space and the fact that we were the only two women in the room, we were welcomed with big smiles, and a lot of scotch…My favorite of the night was Ardbeg’s newly released Kelpie.

Prior to attending, I, a marketing professional new to the spirits realm, wondered if there would be anything at this event besides whisky and scotch. Turns out…yes! There was a diverse set of offerings outside of the whisky realm including Regatta Beer, rum, dessert-type spirits like Cooley Swan (an Irish cream liqueur), Sam Adams & Angry Orchard. There was even a cocktail book display from Greenlight, a local independent bookstore in NYC.

The whisky offering itself was naturally very intensive, as they provided staples including Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Yamazaki (a trendy Japanese whisky), Jack Daniels, and newly popular locally hand crafted whiskies such as Whiskey Jane, and Van Brunt Stillhouse Rye Whiskey, both made in Brooklyn, NY.

My personal favorite display of the night was Whiskey Jane’s. They had their “Heirloom Collection” Gift Set on display, which featured mini bourbon samples packaged in a wood cigar box. All featured bourbons are New York State-grown farm-to-bottle distillations of mixed yellow and red endosperm corns. The booth table was very kitschy and unique, full of vibrant colors and corn accents.

I was very surprised (and delighted!) to find an Angry Orchard table at the show. When I’m not sampling hard liquor, I do appreciate a good hard cider.

Angry Orchard has a new release of The Cider House Collection, their new line of “artisanal hard ciders” including The Muse which drinks like a Prosecco and Walden Hollow, a mild dry cider that showcases the character of our native New York State apples. They were also sampling “Easy Apple” which tasted to me more like a home-grown/farm-to-table Hard Cider. Reminded me of some fermented cider I’ve had from a farm in Upstate New York.

We were also pleased to see Regatta Beer in attendance! We at SoHo Experiential are familiar with them due to their longstanding relationship with Mount Gay Rum and the sailing community.

All in all, we had a great time at Whisky Live NY! I would definitely attend in future.

Most people go to SXSW for the interactive, film or music, but there is a group of us who are more interested in the design. In a crowded field, we are interested in all of the creative ways that brands are working to differentiate themselves. From innovative displays to simple materials in unique mediums, SXSW kicked off with a few standouts (and a few duds). But let’s focus on the positives and highlight the best of the best (at least according to this production-focused marketer).

National Geographic Further Base Camp

Nat Geo really pulled out all the stops with their activation. Taking over a venue on the famous Sixth Street, they completely transformed the space into an interactive experience with multiple touchpoints, from a stage for talks with famous Nat Geo photographers, film makers, etc. to a virtual reality booth. More impressive was their attention to detail and the finishing touches they made to the entire space. Instead of painting the exterior, Nat Geo did a full graphic wrap on the brick façade and trim. The interior was completely covered with black vinyl and/or fabric. On the rooftop, they took the iconic yellow logo and created an oversized version, perfect for an organic photo moment.

IBM

IBM also used full exterior-building vinyl wraps to execute a complete venue takeover. The exterior pattern was present throughout the space, creating a unified visual theme. The standout, however, was the interior use of projections. From freestanding screens to hanging milk plexiglass cutouts, the use of different mediums on which to project was both visually interesting and engaging.

Other Standouts

YouTube showed some of the original content found on their channel through traditional mediums, but really engaged consumers with their globe projections. The display was so cool that the onus was taken off of the (still engaging) content to fully capture guests’ attentions.

Pinterest’s activation invited guests to put on their artistic hats. The venue’s entryway featured a wall that encouraged people to add their own artwork by smearing paint on the walls. Holes within the wall contained different colors of paint for consumers to dip their fingers into. The activation earned a big plus for the crowdsourced décor, and minus three points for not having any moderators to monitor the content.

Final Thoughts

SXSW activations often demonstrate some of the best that the industry has to offer, and this year’s group did not disappoint. While brands are still wrapping their collective heads around using more technology in live events, it’s clear that new innovations are being incorporated into the overall aesthetic of activations, rather than being tacked on after the fact. These events combined a keen eye for design and a forward thinking approach, while still prioritizing a rewarding user experience.

SXSW Interactive was filled with surprising and disruptive activations. Everything from professional wrestlers sporting tights in 45-degree weather, to people surfing in a parking lot, to the 30-foot-tall buffalo that American Gods installed, watching over the entire spectacle.

While there were more than a few disruptive activations, a select group of brands pushed their execution beyond expectations. These activations demonstrated a desire to be seen as more than a product.

One such experience, The Mashable House, is known for consistently delivering great experiences, and it didn’t disappoint this year. Prior to opening this year’s incarnation of the Mashable house, the brand said, “This year, we dedicate the Mashable House to you: the super fans. The people who love to love what they love. The people who don’t simply partake in culture; they devour it. It is for people who are passionate, curious, and downright obsessive.”

The house contained interactives from The Bosco, Navdy, King Arthur, Jim Beam, and Hornitos, among others. The most interesting, however, came from Lennox (yes, the HVAC company) and their execution of Degrees of Perfect. The exhibit hosted two activities, one passive and one interactive experience.

The passive experience was a mural created with thermochromic paint, which changes colors when exposed to warm or cool air. The piece was designed by street artist Fluke from A’shop. When heated air is applied to the mural the thermochromic paint disappears, and another mural appears from underneath. Once cool air is blown on the mural the original image returns. The experience took place in a clear plexiglass room, and was as beautiful as it was unanticipated. The experience highlighted an artist’s creativity, a little bit of science, and well…HVAC, to create something beautiful and totally unexpected.

The interactive experience also gave people a chance to create their own custom art with a similar technology as the larger art display. Attendees were given a can of compressed air and instructed on how to create their own mural. Spraying the air on heated panels changed the thermochromic paint’s color. Attendees could jump right in with minimal explanation of how to engage with the experience. The experience was also highly shareable from attendees’ devices. Whether it was by design or just a fortunate coincidence, the engagement made a fantastic boomerang video.

Lennox branding was prominent but tasteful throughout the space. The brand allowed the art installation to be the hero throughout both parts of the activation. They even managed to avoid placing a sales rep in the space to sheepishly try and sell you on their benefits. You wouldn’t expect to see such an industrial product being demonstrated in such an elegant way.

Lennox exceeded any expectation of what an HVAC supplier would do to demonstrate their products. The activation was fun, technologically interesting, and most important, completely relevant to attendees.

The world is more connected than ever, but it often feels like we have never been further apart. Event marketing is a genuine communication between brand and consumer, bringing people together in an immersive experience. An effective activation is an exchange, with both brand and consumer contributing to the moment, and both leaving with a better understanding and appreciation of the other.

What does event (AKA experiential) marketing look like?

Whether it be a pop up shop, an invitation-only cocktail event, or even a virtual reality activation, the common thread through every event marketing effort is guests engaging directly with the brand. 74% of consumers say engaging with branded event marketing experiences makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted.

Unlike more traditional forms of advertising, which function as interruptions from the content the consumer is there to see, event marketing is the main event. 87% of consumers say that they found live events to be more informative than TV commercials.

So what makes event marketing so powerful?

Emotional connection.

An experiential activation usually has more than one goal. You might want to educate the consumer about a new product or service. You might want to solicit feedback firsthand. You might even just want to let them know you exist. Regardless, when your event is over, your success or failure should be determined by one question: Did you create an emotionally impactful experience? That doesn’t mean your guests should leave in tears. Rather, that when they leave, no matter what they did or learned during the event, they feel a connection to the brand that they didn’t have that morning.

People want the brands that they feel good about, and long after the details of your event fade from memory, those feelings will remain. Maya Angelou said it best when she stated, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” In event marketing, we strive to create that feeling, one that will live in the back of consumers’ minds as they make their purchasing decisions.

But…how many people can an event really impact?

Our co-founder Rick Kiley has mused on the surprise that marketers sometimes express that not only are events filled, but that they’re filled with the right people. This is no accident. The quality and/or quantity of your attendees is one of the tipping points upon which your event’s success rests. Be it with a highly targeted guest list, a well-chosen pop-up location, or effective PR alerting people of an upcoming activation, no detail is too small.

As is true in many parts of the industry, influencers have an important role to play here. Targeting people with an existing social or traditional media following enables an event’s reach to extend far beyond its attendees.

Extending reach through social media sharing is a key strategy for most events. To this end, most activations are designed to encourage and optimize social sharing to the tune of 98% of consumers creating digital or social content while at an experience. From that point, a simple event hashtag or social account is enough to turn an isolated event into a content generation factory. In many ways, event marketing is as old school as it gets: people engaging in firsthand experiences with products or services. The understanding that consumers gain in this process will serve to educate them on your brand, and even give them a feeling of ownership over the product or service being showcased. When coupled with the modern technology designed to enhance these moments and expand an activation’s boundaries, a true bond is formed between brand and consumer. The intimacy inherent to event marketing sets it apart from more removed marketing techniques, and makes it a natural choice for endearing your brand to a world of consumers.

There was a time in my life when those two words were all that was needed to break down the nerve-wracking barrier of actually speaking to a stranger. With words. Out of your mouth. In a world before tinder and text messages; in a world before you could digitally engage with people with such anonymous ease, you had to open your mouth and therefore risk seeing someone respond negatively to what you had to say. During this time of my life, call it my “pre-responsible phase” of adulthood, I smoked. Not a ton, but enough to occasionally ask for a light. Of course I knew the cigarettes were bad. They are terrible. In fact, I’ve always hated cigarettes…but I loved smoking. I loved the people and the immediate bond and acceptance I felt with others. We shared a common interest, spoke a common language, and reflected a sense of belonging in each other.

In July of this year, Pokémon Go stormed onto the scene. By tapping into millennial nostalgia and executing a cute and “share-worthy” augmented reality tool, Niantic (creators of Pokémon Go) shattered records for downloads and Daily Active Users. Furthermore, they created a very intuitive digital app that crosses over into the real world in a meaningful way.

Why meaningful? Because Pokémon Go is just like smoking – because Pokémon Go offers a world where users share a common interest, speak a common language, and reflect a sense of belonging in each other.

Here’s why it matters, and what those who create live or digital engagements should keep in mind if they wish to replicate its success:

1. Pokémon Go brings people together in the real world

People once worked together on manufacturing lines, and now we all sit in front of computer terminals. People need other people, and as we become more digitally dialed in, the opportunities to work and congregate together are rarer.

Many apps are building critical mass based on the notion of avoiding human contact. Ever use Seamless Web or another food delivery service? They run subway ads that say “Over 8 million people in New York and we help you avoid them all.” It’s successful because people don’t want to actually speak to someone and place a delivery order. Pokémon Go does the opposite.

Users actually want to engage with each other, go on “Poke-dates”, etc. It’s as if once people are out of their home (and pajamas), a whole big world opens up to them. Then they pop a lure on a Poke-Stop, and they meet other people trying to “catch them all.” They actually talk to each other. And seem to enjoy it!

2. Pokémon Go offers immediate belonging

To feel like we belong is a biological necessity. I spent much of my young life trying to figure out where I fit in (It’s probably why I smoked), and today still think about this when the circumstances dictate it. Anyone who picks up Pokémon Go belongs.

It only took seeing my son engage with others on the street with a simple gesture towards a mobile phone and the two words “Pokémon Go?” to see the power in that sense of belonging that I haven’t seen since saying “Gotta light?”

With a simple nod of the head, my son and this stranger have forged a relationship and spin into a discussion about levels, teams, and most powerful characters. I’ve witnessed this many times – not once has the response been “bug off.”

It’s a welcoming group; a group that shares a common interest, speaks a common language, and reflects a sense of belonging in each other.

3. Pokémon Go fits into life without changing it

Pokémon Go requires you to walk around and catch Pokémon. Normally, when I walk around, I’m doing something passive (anything from thinking, or listening to music), but certainly not playing a game, or trying to achieve anything. I suppose what I’m saying is – I don’t feel like I’m giving anything up to play – because the gaming has fit into a time of my life where I’m not trying to achieve anything other than get from point A to point B. There is genius in the idea that the experience fits into life pretty easily.

4. Pokémon Go is a level playing field for new users and fans of the Pokémon franchise

I didn’t know thing one about Pokémon before downloading Pokémon Go. Other than Pikachu, I couldn’t tell you one character name. Were it not for my curiosity resulting from all the press at its launch I never would have even tried it. But, I did. Now I, a 42 year-old man, play Pokémon Go with regularity. I mostly keep up with it because my kids enjoy it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to finding it compelling myself.

There are no head starts in Pokémon Go. Everyone begins on equal footing, and what users get out of it is entirely dependent on what they choose to put in.

5. Pokémon Go is addictive (sound like anything else?)

Confession time. Our trainer (I say “our” because it’s my kids’ and mine), is at level 21. We’ve incubated 82 eggs and caught 923 Pokémon. Even with all the time invested in it, the world is so large that it seems like there is always something to do next. New updates to gameplay ensure this, but it’s still a pretty impressive feat.

The qualities of Pokémon Go are ingredients for a very powerful recipe to engage and connect with people in a memorable and sustainable way. No matter what client we work with, no matter what story we are telling, and no matter how we are engaging people, we should use the questions, which Pokémon Go answers in the affirmative, as a litmus test.

Is what we are creating compelling enough that people will want to engage over and over and over again?

Are we bringing people together (ideally in the real world)?

Are we being open and welcoming, rather than exclusionary?

Does what we create cause people to give up something they do already, or not?

Are there low barriers to entry, so that anyone can enjoy, no matter what the relationship with the brand, franchise or property?

Answer yes to these questions, and I’d wager you’ll be on a winning path – like when you incubate a 10km egg, and find yourself with a powerful Snorlax.

Remember January, 2001, when a little rectangle with an LCD screen started showing up on billboards and magazines with the simple statement, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” With that game changing claim, the iPod was born. At the time of its launch, while other mp3 players were available, none looked this good, and none came close to delivering on the promise — 1,000 songs in your pocket seemed otherworldly at the time!

Now, more than 15 years later, even given the ground-breaking nature of that promise, the iPod is not even manufactured anymore. Yet, in its wake, the iPod spawned the now huge digital music industry, and gobs of other consumer electronics companies designing and selling their own mp3 players. As innovative as the iPod was, numerous other products from companies like Sony, Microsoft and Samsung were able to match the offering of the iPod in short time.

On February 28, 1954, Westinghouse introduced the first color TVs to the United States, at the low price of $1,295 ($11,373 in 2015), and their first to market advantage lasted roughly a month, until RCA brought another, cheaper version on the market. 60 years later, there are more styles, brands and sizes of color televisions than I care to count; each unit falling along a spectrum of television sets that provide essentially the same function.

No matter the product, no matter the industry, the same truth exists; with the exception of the brief “first to market” period following a true innovation or invention (i.e. light bulb, internal combustion engine, mobile telephone), no product is singular.

There is always a chief competitor (think Coke and Pepsi) and there is always a cheap alternative, (think Yugo vs. Mercedes). In some cases the cheap alternative emerges as a generic substitute (acetaminophen vs.Tylenol), or a private label brand that a retailer has simply created to repackage something you already buy.

The various marketing machines associated with the thousands of products we see and use help make us feel differently about each brand or type of product, but at the end of the day, a slice of pizza (or four) will fill your belly up, be it from Grimaldi’s or DiFara’s.

The fact that the pizza will “fill your belly up” is one of its functional benefits. Additional differentiators or descriptors are that it may have a “thin crust,” be “deep dish,” it might be “original recipe” or be “made with organic tomatoes.” Regardless of these descriptors however, functionally speaking, pizza is some combination of dough, sauce and cheese, baked in a really hot oven, which fills your belly up.

Let’s consider for a moment your favorite pizza. The one you love above all others. Some soulful tastemakers may agree with you, while some taste-bud challenged cretins might disagree. So, while you may contend your favorite pizza is THE best, it is unparalleled… that’s only true for you. And, whether you know it or not, that truth is based in an Emotional Benefit derived from EXPERIENCE.

Perhaps you first tasted that pizza on your baseball team after getting a game winning hit, and you’ve carried that special moment with you forever, and that’s why you love it. Perhaps you’ve never been to New York before, and only had Canadian pizza topped with canadian bacon and maple syrup (sorry Canada), and your mind is blown by tastes you’ve never experienced. Or perhaps you just burned your mouth on it, and it’s ruined for you. The through line here is that the product itself isn’t nearly as important your experience with it.

In 1913, a comic strip created by Arthur R. “Pop” Momand debuted called “Keeping up with the Joneses.” The strip ran until 1940, and then after WWII, the title because common vernacular for those aspiring to the 1950s and 1960s “American Dream.” In the ‘50s big brand names were synonymous with quality and trust, and consumers wore those badges with pride. People wanted the bigger cars their neighbors owned, the best tools, etc. “Keeping up with the Joneses” drove the economy for a long time.

As society evolved, however, and as the economy hit a few bumps in the road, a shift began to occur. There are simply too many products out there, and new ones coming out too quickly to “keep up” anymore. With the advent of social media in 2005, and smart phones taking off after 2009, people started to not care about the “stuff” anymore. Conspicuous consumption was replaced with “intelligent consumption,” and everyone become more interested in what others were doing on their social media feed, than the stuff they obtained.

Today, we aren’t keeping up with the Joneses, we are keeping up with what they are doing. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds are littered with images of food porn, feet on sandy beaches, concerts mid-encore, vacations; all designed on some level to promote the same sort of reaction that buying the bigger car did in the 1950s.

These social feeds are curated by their owners. They take time and are thoughtful about what they post. They edit it, they crop images, they enhance photos and edit videos, because the social media feed IS who they are, or at the very least, whom they want others to think they are.

A quick review of these feeds will shows you that they are filled with experiences; those that are unique, those that are interesting, those that spark envy, drive FOMO, and elevate social status. They are SHARE WORTHY. People aren’t sharing a photo of their new blender, and captioning it, “my new blender.” They are sharing a picture of their blender with all the ingredients necessary to make a Frozen Margarita with a caption that says “New Blender + Tequila + Lime + YOU = MARGARITA MADNESS TONIGHT!!!!!” It’s not about the “thing” it’s about the “experience” derived from the thing.

Luckily, I think most brand marketers aren’t focusing on functional benefits, and they are thinking about how consumers experience their brand; however, the question marketers should be asking themselves today is “How do I enable consumers to experience my brand in a share worthy way?” Because with today’s consumers, if they didn’t share it, it didn’t happen.

For years, SoHo has been working to help brands deal with baggage. And I’m not talking about the totally stylish, leather-trimmed, Gucci weekend kind of baggage either. I’m talking about the misperception, misunderstanding, price/value disconnect, “that’s-a-brand-for-my-parents” type of baggage. Baggage that is capable of dragging once-great brands down the drain of irrelevance. Over the years, SoHo has been challenged to help brands and categories struggling to reinvent themselves. The challenges these brands faced ran from the early days of whisky (yes, there was a time when you couldn’t give it away, and it wasn’t that long ago) to banking (anyone remember 2008?).

Lately, we’ve started thinking about how the image of a formerly great brand – the USA, has been tarnished by what amounts to bad “brand management.” Accordingly, we thought it would be interesting, and possibly productive, if we just treated our elected officials like clients treat agencies. So as many brands do from time to time, we’ve decided it would be fun to put the “Congressional business,” the whole enchilada, out for bid. I mean who better to create a brief than an agency?!

So without further ado, we humbly present the brief to all the agencies of the world, to replace the United States Congress.

Goal

Select an Agency to replace the existing Agency (Congress) that will manage the Day-to-Day Life Experiences of Americans so that they don’t change brands a.k.a. move to Canada (no offense Canada).

Qualifications

The new Agency must:

Be capable of understanding a very diverse Target Consumer set that is constantly changing – Spanish language a plus!

Be creative; we have a new set of challenges and throwing the same old ideas against the wall won’t get us where we want to go – think outside the box!

Be a team player! Yep, what’s true in the private sector is also true in the public sector, you MUST work with other Agencies to accomplish your goals.

Be able to craft an overarching strategy, that can flex to meet the vast majority of target consumers – not just small but vocal minority segments.

Be able to tell fact from fiction – a job most agencies should naturally be gifted at given the recurrent necessity to make something out of nothing..

Produce positive results and ROI: Solid data is mandatory – Agencies are strongly encouraged to stand by their results – this isn’t grade school and we know there will be learning along the way but don’t just make up results as you go along or blame the other agencies to save your contract.

Possess strong work ethic: the new Agency must be willing to work nights, weekends and holidays – this is the big leagues and the job is done only when the job is done.

Facebook experience a plus!

Objectives

Create an Experience for the Target Consumer that meets both their stated needs; including safety, access to the American dream and free speech, as well as unstated needs like improving the educational system so people can actually understand and thrive in an increasingly complex world.

Maintain the brand’s core values – including but not limited to “All men are created equal”, the “separation of Church and State” and of course that whole “Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” thing we heard so much of in grade school.

“Drive Buzz” about America to the rest of the world; promote that we are an enlightened, empathetic people who care about the planet.

Must have an instantly shareable Social Media strategy.

Regions covered

The 50 United States and all US Territories except California which does whatever it wants anyway.

Must have a basic understanding of geography as demonstrated by successfully locating Russia, China, and the EU powers using Google Earth.

A deep understanding that Foreign Policy isn’t going to be effective by use of rhetoric, name calling, or stereotyping – though I do think the Pepsi Challenge as a way of teaching religious tolerance is a great idea!

Agency Philosophy

Please rank the following from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”:

When touting the benefits of Democracy, the USA is a brand I always think of first.

The USA is a brand I can confidently recommend to friends.

While I feel the USA is great already, I feel that it could be greater with more selective approach to its citizenry, I mean customers.

The Berlin Wall wasn’t an archaic means of oppressing a people; it was the birthplace of wild postings.

The Geneva Convention is where I can get the best deals on Swiss watches while drinking an amazing chocolate latte.

Too much choice is a bad thing, it just confuses people, what people want is less customization and less self-determination.

Key Competitors/Conflicts

Any agency that wins the business must be familiar with, and be free of contractual conflicts (non competes) with other competitive Brands:

China

Russia

Mexico

Brazil

Venezuela

Pepsi

Previous Experience

List any Experience you have Running another Brand/Country

May we contact any previous countries about your work?

Have any of your other clients suffered a military coup because of your work?

Top Five Clients

Give the names of any countries, or clients with GNP as large as a country that you currently service

Give the number of years you’ve held the account

Please give brief details of what you do on each piece of business by discipline. (E.g. run a Legislative branch via crowdsourcing, made new laws that pushed the envelope, set foreign policy that conveyed the message in a manner relevant to the local populations, run an impeachment proceeding against a federal or Chief Creative Officer, ratified a treaty with a foreign power or competitive agency, run digital media, PR, etc.)

Do you have any of the following policies?

Answer Y or N for each.

Quality Control – Agency finalist will ensure proper execution

Disaster Recovery – What do you do when one of your programs is an Epic Fail or you are attacked by a foreign nation?

Equality and Diversity – Do you consider yourselves a big-ass wall building kind of agency or one that sees potential in new ways of thinking?

Social and Corporate Responsibility – In one Tweet or less, please explain what this means so that even a Gen Xer can get it.

Environmental – Do you practice sustainable business practices? Global Warming – scientific fact or marketing hype designed to sell boats?

It would be my hope that upon reading the title, you, the reader, would say “HELL Yeah.” You wouldn’t be alone either. These days, it seems that our clients get more excited about creating experiences for their brands than they do for anything else. We feel they are right to be enthusiastic, of course. As an experiential agency, we invest so much time selling the idea that consumers love experiences, that we sometimes overlook how much satisfaction our clients (who are basically the most passionate brand users out there) get out of creating them.

Over the past 11 years, SoHo has morphed from a tiny, three-person startup agency that would take on nearly any project, to a mid-sized agency that is lucky enough to work with some very well-established and recognizable brands. Throughout our first decade, we’ve worked with small emerging brands as well as recognizable brands with eight and nine figure annual A&P budgets. As a result, our exposure to brands in different life stages (from product launch to market leader), has provided us with the insight required to determine if a prospective client is really ready for experiential.

The cynical person may now comment, “Well, I bet you work with any client who has a ton of money to spend.” And yes, of course, a war chest of cash can be enticing, but unfortunately, cash alone cannot make a bad strategy work, or make people want a product they don’t like. Believe it or not, we have walked away from well-paying clients in the past, and it’s because they were not able to answer YES to the questions below.

1. Can attendees buy your product or service easily? This is the number one issue plaguing new brands. Unfortunately, you simply cannot invest in experiential until EVERYONE attending can buy your product or service easily. If your brand’s online store isn’t set up yet – DON’T invest in Experiential – set up your store. If online sales aren’t easy or an option; if you don’t have distribution at retailers that your attendees can get to from their homes in less than 10 minutes – DON’T invest in Experiential – invest in distribution.

If your event’s attendees love your brand, but they can’t get their hands on your products easily, you will lose them forever! They will be mad that their emotional balloon was popped, and find the closest competitor and start using their brand. Please, please, don’t let this happen.

2. Can you articulate what success looks like in a measurable way? My (least) favorite briefing meeting we’ve ever participated in went down like this:

CLIENT PROSPECT: “We just want to do cool stuff.”ME: “Ok. But what do you want the event to do?”CP: “We want it to be cool.”ME: “I hear ya… but what do you want the attendees to do after they attend?”CP: “Say that the event was cool.”ME: “Ok… How many people do you want to attend?”CP: “I don’t know.”ME: “What kind of budget do you have?”CP: “That will depend on the idea. On how cool we think it is.”ME: “How much do you want to spend per head?”CP: “We’ll see what we’re cool with.”ME: “Thank you for your time.”

In writing this short play, I honestly only added one extra “cool” into the script, but I think the point is clear. The fact is, many clients have a hard time translating what they want out of an experience into a measurable objective, and therefore will not get as much support from their superiors, who are often bottom-line minded CFO’s and CEO’s. The entrenched CEO/CFO thinks, “if we invest this money in a shopper marketing program, I’ll see an 8% uptick in sales over the next quarter.” Client side marketing leaders must put quantifiable objectives in place, because it will help us agencies deliver, and ensure that the program will not get cut by financial leadership at some point.

I will pen a future blog post about measurements and analytics; but, for now, focus on three main factors – increased usage/consumption, increased affinity, and post-event advocacy. These three metrics are 100% quantifiable, and key to proving success.

3. Do you have the ability to scale up? When creating a new experience, most clients, whether they are a Fortune 500 brand or a small startup, want to “test” a program. This is smart, and we are always supportive of a test and learn approach. But, consider this – you’ve performed the test, you’ve researched the results and captured feedback, and you’ve determined that it’s an unqualified success. The experience changes behavior, it’s highly memorable, and your guests are now converting their peers. Now what?

For a successful experiential campaign to take off, clients need to be ready to put the pedal to the metal when they find a winner. If your roll out budget is only a 25% increase over your test budget, then the program will not be a difference maker. Clients need to plan for success, not failure. Use long term planning to earmark 5x or 10x your test budget so that, if a program works, you can ramp up quickly, and in a big way. Brands that are able to execute decisively are rewarded with a notable uptick in every brand health measure.

4. Can you be patient enough for your experience to bear fruit? Branded experiences, when successful, change behavior. The realization of this behavioral change, in the form of increased buzz and greater sales, rarely comes immediately. It takes time. It takes time for someone to take what they experience and incorporate it into their lives. It takes time for them to tell their friends about the experience, share what they learned, and influence their friends to incorporate it into their lives. It takes time for that new behavior to repeat, and repeat again.

Every client has a different expectation on when they should earn back their investment in the consumer who participates. For some clients, they want to earn it back in a year, or two years. Some can be a little faster, and some who have very slow sales cycles (like car companies) can be even more patient.

While the timing differs from brand to brand, one thing is clear. If your need is to hit a sales number in 30 days or for a quarter, experiential may not be the answer. If you are looking to drive subscriptions or drive sales, then coupons, BOGOs, and GWPs are the way to get you there. Just don’t expect coupons to change behavior.

5. Can you stay focused enough to make an impact? Once a program is proven to be successful in one city, stakeholders in other cities will clamor for the campaign to appear in their market as well. The brand director who helped create the program, and was smart enough to plan for a 5x increase in budget because it was so successful, is now faced with a challenge:

“Do I stay focused on fewer areas, where I can achieve a beach-head and really own the market? Or do I try and make internal stakeholders happy, and run the risk of diluting the impact of the campaign by potentially stretching it too thin.”

This can be a real problem for several reasons; the first being that it is simply more expensive to run a program in more markets. If your goal is to reach 100,000 consumers, it will be significantly cheaper to focus on three cities than to extend to 10 cities. With 10 markets, we see increased travel, extra activation kits, more people to train, etc. This drives up the costs and reduces the efficiency of the activation.

Additionally, stretching too thin reduces your campaign’s ability to hit a tipping point in a market, where the campaign buzz takes on its own life, and you benefit from that focused investment in earned media and social chatter.

In our experience, clients that have the most success with experiential marketing answer YES to all five of these questions. They are the clients with whom we are enjoying productive long-term relationships today. Experiential is a unique and exciting discipline, because you get to see opinions changing before your very eyes. When we are able to take a patient, measured approach, ensuring that our clients are ready to realize the full benefits of experiential, we can go beyond marketing goals; changing consumers’ minds and creating vocal brand advocates.

We’ve all been there before. We’ve laid out the spread, adjusted the lighting, stocked the bar, iced the beers, and pushed play on the hand selected playlist. Weeks of planning build to this moment when, 10 minutes before the party is scheduled to start, we sit on the sofa, nursing a drink to calm our nerves about our greatest fear:

“What if nobody shows up?”

Whether it’s for an event we are producing for a client, or for a birthday party I’m throwing for my kids, I’m often dealt a sweaty moment of pause right before it begins, dreading that the unlikely doomsday scenario that haunts my dreams might become a reality.

Of course, as with any anxiety, the only relief comes in the form of PREPAREDNESS and EXPERIENCE.

In the business of experiential, the stakes are raised even further; our natural fear that people will not show up is compounded by the fact that we are spending other people’s money. For experiential marketers and event producers around the world, a poorly attended event can be a death sentence because, according to clients, if a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it, it definitely did NOT make a sound.

I’m still caught off guard when people attend a SoHo Experiential event and the first question they ask is, “How did you GET all these people here?” as if it were some magic trick we learned while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Don’t get me wrong, my astonishment isn’t with the question; our team mines gobs of data and works our invitation plans for months to get right, it’s just a little surprising to me that with all the new interactive doodads and digital bells and whistles we layer onto our events these days, that this is STILL the number one question.

“No. Really. How did you GET everyone here? I mean, they are all the RIGHT people too! They all look like the people that I want here.”

I, and everyone else at our agency, have always been a little cagey about our answer to this question, since we don’t want to give away our competitive advantage. However, saying it’s a trade secret doesn’t tend to go over very well with clients. So, we formalized our invitation management process into a service we call SoHo Connect, and began offering attendance management as a stand-alone service, giving our clients a little more insight into how we do what we do in the process.

For anyone interested in ensuring their events are full in the future, I thought I’d share seven insights that help us get the job done. Some of these ideas are building blocks of our SoHo Connect system, which is 10 years and 50,000 events in the making, and still evolving every day.

DON’T BE AFRAID – First and foremost, it seems that everyone wants to pass the buck on this task. Many agencies want to create great events, but don’t want to be held responsible for generating an audience. This is a fully analytical task that with enough time and opportunities any mathematically sound mind can figure out. Also, it’s great to raise your hand and say you can do it, when no one else wants to. Be bold, be accountable – and don’t be afraid.

TEST CONSTANTLY – The methods of driving attendance are changing constantly. The only way to stay on top of the ever-evolving landscape is to test new invitation tactics, even when you don’t have to. If you find a successful approach and just stick with it, you will learn too late that some new social site called TwitFaceSter just popped up, and it’s the only place to find the influential members of the millennial creative class your client so desperately wants to engage.

UNDERSTAND THE VALUE OF YOUR OFFERING – You need to figure out how important your event is to people. Once they say they are going to come, will they? How many? If the Chicago Cubs make it into the playoffs, will people ditch your event to watch the game instead? Will people pay? How much is too much? These are all excellent questions that need to be answered if you are going to deliver a full house (in October in Chicago). Unfortunately, while advance intelligence will provide some guidance for all your questions, the only way to truly know for sure is to test it out. If you can build in budget for some test events with your client, great. If you can manage their expectations during this process, even better.

OVERBOOK – Take a page from the airlines. It’s always better to turn people away, and offer them an apology and an invite to attend at a later date, than to have no-shows. Clients often shy away from this, and you need to show them that a few momentarily unsatisfied people is far better than a 50% full house, at double your target Cost per head. Furthermore, if you are able to develop a good turn-away- plan, you’ll be able to turn those unhappy people into future leads for your program, and your client.

HAVE A PLAN A, PLAN B, and PLAN C – This seems obvious, of course. However, with driving attendance, you also need to build in enough time to implement your backup plans. It will not help to learn that your event is only 60% full two days prior, because you will not have enough time to react accordingly. Start your invitation campaign early, and build in specific goals to hit by target dates leading up to your event. If you don’t hit the mark, pull the trigger on Plan B – don’t get emotional about this, and don’t hesitate. If you delay, you will lose precious time required to fulfill your commitment.

ENCOURAGE PASS ALONG – Especially when dealing with digital invitations, the “pass along” or “viral” aspect of the medium is very helpful. Someone receives an invite, determines he or she cannot attend, but knows a friend who would like it, and passes the invitation along. Our campaigns often see up to 30% of registrants come through pass along methods, and we LOVE this. Recently we’ve taken steps to reward people who will pass along invites to friends, using systems we’ve built, and I encourage you to do the same.

FILL EVENTS FIRST, OPTIMIZE TARGETING LATER – This may sound a tad controversial, and you don’t need to agree with me; however, over the years we have found that, in the eyes of our clients, an empty event is a cardinal sin, while an certain “acceptable” number of attendees being off- target is perceived as an opportunity to improve the in the future. I believe this is true for two reasons. First, at the end of the day, cost per attendee is a big Key Performance Indicator – arguably the #1 performance indicator. If your program is budgeted for $100/head, but ends up costing $200/head, it doesn’t matter who you have there – eventually your client CFO is going shut it down. But, if some off-target people come, they are still usually viewed as people who are interested in your client’s brand – and the bean counters will stay off your back.

If you have other ideas, I would love to hear them and discuss them. The good news is that, as daunting and anxiety provoking as driving attendance can be, live events and experiences are what people want. The day of branded swag has passed – I mean, when was the last time you saw someone post a photo of an awesome branded keychain on Instagram? People want to come to events, and there is big opportunity for anyone with the patience and diligence to develop a system to draw them in.

We recently shared the results of a survey conducted by The Event Marketing Institute, one of the Experiential Marketing Industry’s foremost research authorities. That survey determined that 8 out of 10 people who participated in an experiential marketing event said they told others about it. To us, this was less breaking news and more a validation of what we have been saying for years: “what people want to share most is experience.” We are no longer as concerned with sharing what we’ve bought, what we have, or what we can afford. The “keeping up with the Joneses” arms race ended when people realized that there’s always a newer smartphone, a cooler vacation, and an even “more electric” car on the scene. So what is it about experiences, those in-the-moment engagements, which have become so share-worthy? We have identified some key understandings about people’s motivations to share that drive our experiential marketing strategies.

The first is that experience is by definition, personal. Even group-experiences are seen through the eyes of an individual. A personal experience is wrapped in our expectations, beliefs, prejudices, and above all, our emotions. It’s why people go to concerts, and despite standing amongst a huge crowd, feel the artist was performing “just for them.” At the end of the day, feeling this sort of singularity is a basic human need.

The second motivation is the driving force we refer to as “Social Currency.” Social Currency is derived when one person takes validation and self-worth by sharing their experiences with others. When a social share gets more likes, more retweets, more comments, it equals more Social Currency. When your neighbor buys a scotch you recommended, DING, you’ve just deposited Social Currency. When your friends post about a bar you recommended they check out, that’s Social Currency.

So why as marketers, should we care about what motivates sharing? Our opinion is that consumers are so barraged with commercial messaging, from signage, TV, pop up ads, etc. (see FanDuel), it is impossible now to judge the merits of a brand based on messages that come from paid media. Many, if not most, consumers want the endorsement of a friend or trusted confidant. So the key becomes identifying those motivations, and creating experiences that provoke sharing, as well as having a personal payoff. Social media serves a valuable role in the sharing of experiences, but ultimately, it’s only a venue through which we communicate, not a source of experience in and of itself.

Based on our understanding of motivations, we at SoHo have developed a few best practices we apply.

Tell an authentic story. People are pretty smart and can smell a tall tale from a good distance. Moreover, they can fact check anything you care to say, so stay away from BS. Examine your brand’s story. Every brand has one, even if it feels blasé, remember that people aren’t expecting Rudy. Relatability can top oddity.

Make your experiences unique. Today’s consumers are armed to the teeth with gadgetry, software and how-to videos. They can, and often do, create a variety of shareable content that would boggle the minds of even the most prescient futurist. Give them something they can’t get themselves, and they’ll share it.

Keep it simple. I bow to Guy Kawasaki and his rules on presentations for this one. If you can’t explain what you’re trying to convey in a minimal amount of time, with a minimal number of words, you’ll lose your audience. The same holds true for experiences. If an attendee to your experience can’t watch one person do what you want, or read a description and get it in 30 seconds, that’s game over. So don’t go overboard, and you’ll you reap what you desire.

Go analog (don’t be afraid!). We have had clients that want every single part of every single event to be tied to social media and amplification. Well, as it is with margaritas and NFL analysts, more is not always better. When you jam the entire space with small screen add-ons, people wind up missing the important stuff – the actual experience! Think concert-goers who spend the entire show recording on their smartphones. Sure, we want to preserve the moment, but not at the cost of the moment itself. An effective experiential setup doesn’t force social media down its attendees’ throats, it inspires them to share because they had a meaningful experience.

So to all my friends (hi mom) and business partners, don’t be surprised when 80% of your consumers are sharing their brand experiences with their social circles. Instead, expect and embrace it. Discover the art of providing amazing consumer experiences and watch how far word of mouth will carry your message. Begin by examining the motivations that drive sharing. Be less concerned with how they share, and more concerned about what they share. Mix in a little common sense with a good deal of creativity, and the game is on.

I once felt that the best parts about working in experiential were the experiences themselves, witnessing the joy on attendees’ faces, seeing clients’ pride at the consumers immersed in their brands. Over time, however, I’ve grown to appreciate a different aspect of my job — the feeling that comes from reporting analytics which show that we’ve created not only a memorable experience, but one that is a verifiable difference maker.

This “difference” can be defined any number of ways, but it usually comes down to an uptick in sales. It doesn’t matter if you are recruiting new consumers, increasing use by existing consumers, generating PR impressions, or increasing social media buzz — ultimately those metrics always support a business sales objective.

Experiential marketers would do well not to fear this reality, but rather embrace it. In my opinion, proving ROI on a brand experience is far clearer than any marketing discipline other than coupon redemption. Furthermore, most client side brand builders don’t view shopper marketing as a brand building activity; instead, it’s viewed as one that supports commercial partnerships and achieves short term sales goals.

Experiential leaders must take the time to educate our clients to look beyond the social buzz, twitter impressions and “Top 2” box ratings, and work with them to ensure that we measure our programs in a way that shows tangible, sales-based ROI. When you (or your client) goes in front of the CEO to report on the program, do you want to say that your campaign generated 50 million Twitter Impressions? Or do you want to say your program generated a 5% increase in sales on Year 1? I, for one, always prefer the latter.

Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1 – Define Success In Terms Of Incremental Sales

If I were to cut this list down to one step, this would be the one. The simplest method for achieving this task is sitting down with the client and engaging in a simple mathematical conversation. Start with this question:

How long are you willing to wait to earn back what you invest in the experiential program participants?

Meaning, if your Cost Per Attendee (CPA) is $100, how long can you wait until you earn back that $100 in the form of profits from incremental sales?

For ease, let’s say the answer is one year. Next, your client needs to deliver a Gross Profit (GP) per unit constant for our algebraic formula. Again, for ease, let’s say it is $10 per unit. In this example, our goal will be to design a program where, on average, each participant buys 10 or more incremental units over the course of a year. $10 in profit x 10 units/year = $100 Cost Per Attendee.

The equation for any example would be [GP(y) ≥ CPA], before your time limit expires. GP is always constant, “y” is the number of incremental sales units that result from the program, and the CPA is the all-in cost to drive someone through the experience. If, after you evaluate a program, you end up with a left side that is MUCH larger than the right side, then you have a very successful program. If the right side of your equation is higher than the left, you need to either figure out a way to make it more efficient (read: cheaper), or go back to the drawing board and come up with a new concept.

Step 2 – Establish A Baseline Understanding Of Product Usage

To properly measure incremental sales, we first need to understand where we are starting from. If a person attends our bubblegum event, and then starts going through 10 packs of bubblegum a month, we need to know whether they were chewing 2 packs or 9 packs the month prior. Increased usage can vary dramatically, so before guests participate in our experience, we need to know their current relationship with, and usage of, the brand.

We usually try to capture more, but there is really only ONE question required to set a good sales baseline:

How much of my brand (i.e. client’s bubblegum) did you consume in the past 30 days?

Once we get that answer – from the people who have never heard of our client or their bubblegum, to those who are already chewing it constantly – we can average it to create a Baseline for Program Participants. We can then measure the change in the baseline after the event in order to create our ROI model.

Step 3 – Conduct Follow Up Research

We suggest conducting two follow-up research studies after the event, and don’t let your client cut the budget for them! The first survey should come 30 days post-event, to record changes in behavior, and the second 60 days after that, to see if the initial changes were temporary or sustained.

Email surveys are the easiest and most cost effective to implement. We always recommend providing an incentive for completion ($5 Amazon or Starbucks gift cards work well), so that you can ensure you can capture a statistically significant sample size (10+% of participants).

Through this research we can capture anything our clients wish to know (e.g. which other brands of gum do you chew?), and most importantly, we ask the questions relevant to our ROI model. We will repeat the question from step two, and add a second as well:

How many people did you speak to about the event OR brand in the past 30 days?

Once we can accurately assess our results, we have enough information to create a sales based ROI Model.

Step 4 – Build The Model

I know. More math. Stay with me. Essentially, we want to show an increase in consumption for attendees, and then make some assumptions about the people our attendees speak to about the brand/event.

Part A – Determine usage increase of attendees

If attendees, on average, chewed two packs of gum every 30 days before the event, and then chewed FOUR packs of gum in the 30 days after the event, then the incremental increase is TWO packs of gum. Hopefully, when you conduct your second survey, you will see that the result is still an additional two packs a month. If this is the case, and your time horizon to earn back the investment was one year, you can say that your program contributes 24 incremental sales units/per year, per attendee.

Plug that into our equation from Step 1 to see if GP(24) ≥ CPA. If it is – you are done! Please stop reading this blog immediately, call me, and tell me what you did. I’ll likely try to hire you on the spot! You will have created an extremely successful program, since it doesn’t even rely on peer conversion to deliver on its sales objective. However, if GP(24) ≤ CPA, then we need to move onto Part B.

Part B – Estimate incremental sales due to peer conversion

On paper, this is easy; however, it requires a client (and their CEO) to buy into an idea and agree, in principal, to three numbers. It’s even better if you can deliver some insight through 3rd party research, or your client’s internal planning department, which would make the estimate more grounded. The numbers are as follows:

The percentage of people a program attendee speaks to about a brand/event that will increase their usage

How many incremental sales, on average, will result from those who increase their usage

How many incremental sales, on average, will result from those who attendees trial on usage (“trial” means: when people not only tell their friends about the gum, but give them a piece to try while telling them how awesome it is)

This blog is getting long, so I’m not going to get into the equations here, but this is really where your scale comes from. If someone speaks to 10 people about the brand/event in 30 days, and are still doing that when you conduct the 90-day measurement, you make the case that they influence 120 people a year. Then, if 25% of the people they talk to increase their usage, that’s 30 people per year who do so. And if those 30 people buy just one pack of gum every 2 months, that 180 extra units per year!

So, our litmus test for incremental sales, GP(24) ≥ CPA, is now GP(204) ≥ CPA! By adding in the resulting peer conversion, this fake program just became 8 times more effective!

Step 5 – Optimizing Your Efforts

In reality however, once going through all ROI exercises, more often than not, we still aren’t delivering the sales target. Do not fear, it doesn’t have to mean the death of your program.

If, after nailing down all of the numbers on the left side of the equation, we still haven’t hit our sales goal, then we have to start working on the right side of the equation, by reducing cost, and making it more efficient. This isn’t always easy, but we wouldn’t be event professionals if we didn’t know how to do something for nothing!

Sometimes you can get there by increasing throughput, and cutting extraneous program elements. It may sound counterintuitive, but sometimes the best way to get there is by adding scale and asking your client to increase their investment!

Sound crazy? It’s not. It’s easy to ask someone to double or triple the investment if I have an ROI model that shows how they will make their investment back in a year. You know what’s crazy? Trying to ask for more money without one!

Don’t Fear The Numbers

My hope is that those of us in the events business embrace quantitative program measurements, because it will truly set us free. With quantifiable figures at our back, clients will be able to truly grasp the uniquely effective manner in which experiential marketing drives sales.

Getting and giving a good brief is the surest way to avoid having to polish a turd. Every minute you spend up front will save you 60 minutes down the line.

Most everyone who has ever worked with me has heard me share wisdom from my grandfather. Granddad was an engineer for the phone company back when pensions and one-job-for-life paved the road to happiness. But he was more than a guy that climbed telephone poles; he was a true renaissance man, as gifted with his amazing imagination as he was with his hands. He was an excellent painter, an RC airplane enthusiast – lest you doubt the difficulty of this “hobby” I invite you to give it a try. He was also an accomplished amateur gun smith, though he never created anything that could be fired more than once per minute, even by the fastest Civil War soldier.

My grandpa’s workshop/studio/factory was a place of endless fascination for me as a child. Watching the old man work his crafts, I learned some valuable lessons about planning a project before getting started, lessons I still use today. When it came to planning, one of Grandpa’s favorite sayings was, “Jeff, you can’t polish a turd.” While initially I didn’t really get the larger meaning of the statement, as I grew up it became apparent that a truer bit of wisdom was never uttered by Aristotle himself.

As I got older I learned that good work doesn’t just happen. It starts with a solid strategy, aligned tactics and excellent execution. What I learned about turd polishing can be summed up as even excellent execution of a bad plan won’t get you the result you are aiming for.

So here’s where the lesson comes to bear in Experiential; far too often people are ready to jump into a project without laying out a cogent plan first. How many times have you said: “I’ve got a bad brief”? Now, truthfully, ask yourself how often you’ve given a bad brief. The sad fact is that everyone does it. The minute we get slammed we start to cut corners, giving incomplete, confusing, or inaccurate directions. On the flip side, when we’re busy we are much more likely to accept a poorly constructed brief.

It is almost unavoidable that when you give, or accept, a bad brief, your Experiential Output won’t do what you want it to, or worse, it will disappoint a client so badly that you’ll lose said client. But as most know or eventually figure out, a good brief is the stitch in time that saves nine.

So how do you avoid wasting countless hours, resources, and your sanity? Well, here are 5 steps that will help you get, and give, better briefs. They won’t guarantee an existence free of turd polishing, but they should help reduce the frequency dramatically.

Listen Well

Have you ever listened to someone answer a question for 10 minutes, but after the first minute, you know that they are answering the wrong question? So, before answering, paraphrase the question at least one or two times to make sure you are on the same page: “So what you want are bears, on unicycles, juggling chainsaws?”

When delivering a brief to an employee, vendor, or department head, never assume they know what you actually mean. I have become the master of the PowerPoint sketch and mood boards. They will help create the size, look, feel, energy, and ambiance you want when designing experiences.

Define Success

Avoid ambiguous words and clichés; so many clients have tasked us with creating “cool” experiences that we have made the word “illegal” on any brief we create or accept.

All objectives should be clearly defined and quantifiable in the context of the brand; “cool” to Pandora Radio will look markedly different than cool to Pandora Jewelry. If you really want a “cool” event, try using a style guide, mood board, and ideal attendee descriptors.

“Surprise and delight” really just means – don’t bore the hell out of our customers – yep, we get that, so focus on what that phrase means to you in terms of quantifiable measures.

Quantify everything – if buzz is what you want, speak in terms of social media hits, PR placements, or even just attendance.

Beware the Contradiction

This is possibly my least favorite part of any brief, the inherent contradiction: “We want a very intimate, luxurious event. For 10,000 people at $5 per head.” Tasking people to be creative problem solvers can often lead to excellent, new ideas – tasking them with the impossible wastes everyone’s time and resources.

List your goals and objectives in priority order, get the top ones right first and be prepared to make sacrifices the farther you move down the list.

Do your research

Here’s another question; how many times have people come back to you with an idea you’ve tried in the past that didn’t work? “We tried that! Bears don’t have opposable thumbs so they simply can’t hold a chainsaw!”

Undoubtedly the biggest mistake that most Experiential managers make is that they assume they have “all the information”. Be sure to build in the time to look at the environment you will be working in.

Examine your own brand’s past successes and failures, look at the competitive environment and what they’re doing, and lastly, make sure you know what’s relevant to the target consumer group.

Learn to love candor

If you are seeking clarity on a brief delivered to you, say so in plain English. he briefer may get offended, but they will feel better when you produce an awesome experience for them later.

If you are delivering a brief, and someone looks confused, call them out on it. People don’t want to look dim, so they act like they get something even when they don’t; if they look like they don’t get it, assume that they don’t and rephrase.

Getting and giving a good brief is the surest way to avoid having to polish a turd. Every minute you spend up front will save you 60 minutes down the line.

The job of the event professional is to be on top of shifting attitudes and cultural fascinations, even dictating how they develop. Sometimes that means simple changes, or switching up the decor on a long-running event. Sometimes it means boldly charging into a new arena, a technological advancement with the potential to change entire industries, and certainly the world of Experiential. Virtual Reality, or VR, is the phrase on the tip of many a marketer’s tongue, as more and more hardware hits the market, and brands try and figure out how to best utilize the new medium. One thing, however, is clear: the history of the digital age has favored the early adopter, and to ignore the potential for VR in Experiential could prove to be a costly mistake.

At SoHo, we’ve made an effort to incorporate this first wave of VR tech into our events, most recently at our launch party for Bravo’s Below Deck Mediterranean. We’re seeing benefits in more ways than one. The sheer novelty and curiosity about VR has an inherent appeal for guests. Strapping on a headset and being transported to another world has a “The Future is Now” feel that has been in short supply for a generation growing up in an age of rapid evolution in consumer technology. More practically, we’re gaining insights into the types of experiences that excite people, that get them talking to their friends on social media about their virtual tour on a Yacht or their walk across the surface of the moon.

Here are a few takeaways that we’ve gleaned while using Virtual Reality tech at our events:

Build On Your Story

As fun as it is, Virtual Reality isn’t just a fancy new toy, it’s a very real opportunity to engage a fully captivated guest in your brand’s story. What can you do armed with a headset that can transport your guests anywhere in space and time that you couldn’t have done before? Working with our client, we provided a Virtual Reality station at our Below Deck Mediterranean launch party. The engagement empowered guests to experience the “yachty lifestyle” taking place all around them. A brand ambassador briefly explained the technology, and what they were about to see, before allowing them to take sail with the cast of the show. Right off the bat, the participant is engaged in a (one-sided) conversation with a crew member from the boat itself. After another cast member introduction, and a preview of the season, the guest leaps into the water and the experience ends. By combining exclusive video content, virtually-intimate interaction, and a stunning setting, we were able to pack a fully immersive and engaging experience into a very short time frame.

Show Them Something New

Virtual Reality is still in its fledgling stages for consumer use, but it’s going to be hitting the market fast, and in bulk. CEA research is projecting 1.2 million headsets to be sold in 2016, a 500% increase over 2015’s figures. It may be exciting now, but novelty wears off, especially for young, tech-savvy guests. Getting, and holding, people’s attention requires investment on their parts. When you’re dealing with a medium as new as VR, some of that work is going to be done for you. People will generally be eager to try such a futuristic technology. If the content isn’t engaging, however, pretty soon they’ll start to wonder if they look funny looking around the room with a headset on. The onus is still on you to create content that spurs an emotion, be it excitement, curiosity, even envy can be the straw that stirs the proverbial drink. With such a giant leap coming in terms of availability, you can expect to see strides made quickly in terms of content. Encourage your clients to embrace the medium, and plan for Virtual Reality to play a larger and larger role in your events in the coming years.

Stay Committed to In-Person Interactions

An event is at its best when guests are sharing in a moment, interacting and exchanging ideas and opinions about a brand or product. While an immersive Virtual Reality experience will certainly give them something to talk about, be careful that you are striking a balance between your collaborative and social components and the highly personal Virtual Reality segment. Moving beyond the confines of your event, take the opportunity to share with your guests any pertinent hashtags or social accounts that will allow them to take their reactions online.

Gauge Audience Response

Like any other technology in its early stages of development and consumer use, VR has its kinks. What’s enthralling for one guest might be literally nauseating for another. Have the brand ambassadors manning your VR station take note of how people react to the new experience. Getting in-the-moment feedback from your attendees, as well as following up about it in any surveys that you send out will be invaluable as you plan out how to integrate the tech into your future events.

Do we see Virtual Reality as an out and out successor to Experiential Marketing? No, we don’t. Shared experience and physical engagement are fundamental components of event marketing, and ones that won’t be replicated within the confines of a headset anytime soon. However, that certainly doesn’t mean we aren’t eager to see how the technology develops, and we won’t sit on the sidelines while it reaches its full potential.

As a member of today’s digital-savvy world, I’m certain you are aware that it is election season once again! Between the slogans, the polls, the 24/7 news cycle, and the talking heads, it’s easy to lose perspective. All that said, the election process is the key to a flourishing democracy. What’s more, elections provide experiential professionals with a template for ensuring that participants are more deeply engaged in the event they are attending.

The idea behind democratizing an experience is very simple. Instead of creating an event with a linear format that will always be the same, regardless of who is attending, we program a series of moments that, depending on what the audience wants to do, steer the program in a new direction. Essentially, instead of writing one story for the event, we write a “choose your own adventure” style experience.

Today, consumers expect to be able to customize anything: sneakers, cars, cocktails, you name it. That expectation persists for their entertainment as well. Fortunately, with only a few added options for customization from a production standpoint, event producers can create a multitude of experiential paths for our guests. Paths that get to they choose, rather than paths chosen for them.

If you aren’t already democratizing your experiences, don’t hesitate to start. Here are five reasons why.

1. People Care More Once They Make a Choice

Have you ever been to the racetrack, or attended a Kentucky Derby party? I love The Kentucky Derby. The bourbon, the hats, the anticipation…I also like watching the race — The excitement of listening to the announcer amp up the energy as the horses make their way towards the finish.

Now, have you ever placed a bet on a horse race, Kentucky Derby or otherwise? I don’t care if it’s the minimum $2. Have you “had a horse in the race?” I have. I pay very close attention. Once the race starts, I stand up. I scream his name, and yell, “GO GO GO GO” until hopefully, he wins. The contrast between watching the race with nothing at stake versus having a vested interest in the outcome is stark. With the former, I can sit back and be passive. With the latter, I stand up and shout to try and influence the outcome. In short, I care a whole lot more.

It’s no different with events. If you give your guests a choice of four activities, and let them vote on which one to participate in, trust me when I tell you that your attendees will be invested in their choices, and thrilled if their selections prove to be the consensus option. We used to produce an event where attendees would take a virtual trip to one of 10 global destinations, and every time the winner came up, those who voted for it would erupt in genuine celebration. Every time.

The simple math here is that if you empower consumers to make a choice at an event, and they see that choice pay off, their engagement and memories of the experience will deepen significantly.

2. Democratized Events Provide Powerful, Quantitative Data

We are living in a data driven economy, as you know. Every search on Google, every “like” on Facebook, heck, every location we go to with our mobile phone is yet another piece of Big Data intel. So, it’s nice to be able to carve out a piece of the data pie with our programs.

The simple fact is that when we offer up a choice for participants, we can tabulate their answers. When reporting to our clients, we can report on the general preferences of attendees, as well as preferences on an individual level. People’s choices become part of their profiles and, as a result, can inform clients about which aspects of their brand story might make the most impact.

3. Democratized Event Data Helps Tailor Post-Event Communications

Let’s say you are producing an auto show launching the next Tesla model. At a certain point in the show, you give attendees the option to see one of the following:

An interactive map of all the locations where you can plug the car in to recharge it

A short video about its state-of-the-art aerodynamic design

An interactive graphic about the new dashboard features

Even if the consensus is B, you will know who chose A and C as well. After the event, savvy marketers can either directly use this information, sending attendees follow-up information about their areas of interest, or take more subtle action such as ensuring that communications to group B include photos of the exterior design, instead of the interior.

All of this data is actionable. Furthermore, it’s more dependable than data captured through focus groups or other research. Participants aren’t influenced in their responses since their only incentive is to decide on an outcome that will elevate their personal experiences.

Not all event attendees are made equal. Sometimes you draw an actively engaged consumer with an appetite for knowledge and 100,000 Twitter followers, and sometimes you draw a tag-along who is only there as a favor to a friend, and who can’t stop playing Candy Crush. Democratizing your event will not only identify these High Value Consumers (HVCs), but will also afford you the opportunity to reward them for being so engaged.

Through many experiences, there are programmed opportunities for attendees to be singled out for special treatment (“Can I have a volunteer, please?”). Rather than selecting someone at random from the audience, consider picking the person who engages with the most interactive elements, or engages first, or the quickest. Consider selecting the person who has tweeted the most about your interactive engagements, and give that person a chance to participate in a unique, socially shareable moment.

We don’t need to wait until after the event to follow up with our most engaged attendees; by democratizing our event, we can make them feel special before they leave the room.

5. Your Tour Team Will Thank You

As anyone who has been on the road, bringing an experience to life on a daily basis, will tell you, after a while, your experience can begin to become mundane. Even the most professional and experienced crew can get bored and become complacent at the event. With complacency comes the potential for production error, and production errors are just not allowed.

One nice side effect of a Democratized event is that every day the events will be a little bit different; hence, your tour team is more actively engaged in what’s going on. This is a big deal. Given the choice of producing the same event for 100 days, or an event that is dynamic and offers something new each day, your tour team will thank you for the opportunity to shake things up.

The next time you are at an event, see if it includes moments of democratization. If it does, observe the level of attendee participation and investment in the outcome. If it doesn’t, see if you can identify what components could be enhanced by offering guests a choice. See if you can identify opportunities for customization. Every moment that you can empower consumers with a choice will strengthen your, and their, experience as a whole.